Carla Lane, the award-winning writer of television comedy dramas including the Liver Birds and Bread, has died at the age of 87.
After blazing a trail as one of British television’s most successful scriptwriters, Lane had also become known in recent years for her animal rights activities and ran an animal sanctuary on 25 acres of land in Sussex before selling it in 2009.
She died at a nursing home in Liverpool’s Mossley Hill district on Monday, the Liverpool Echo reported.
Her brand of humour and involvement in some of British television’s most popular shows was praised on Tuesday by figures including Melanie Gill, who appeared in Bread as Aveline.
Lane, who was born Romana Barrack in Liverpool, later changed her name because she said she was “shy” about people knowing she wrote The Liver Birds, the long-running BBC series about the two Liverpudlian flatmates she created with Myra Taylor.
Lane went on to write several other series for the BBC, including Butterflies, starring Wendy Craig, Solo with Felicity Kendal, and Bread, which was closely associated with her signature bittersweet style.
Running from 1986 to 1991, its chronicling of the Boswell family’s struggles with poverty and unemployment during Britain’s 1980s recession was watched by almost 21 million people at the height of its popularity.
Jean Boht, who played the part of Bread’s matriarch, Nellie Boswell, described Lane as a genius.
Remembering the making of the show and Lane’s role in its creation, she told the BBC: “She looked 16 all the time, and we loved her. She’d be there, would help us, direct us. She loved us as we loved her.”
“I was a woman, I was Liverpudlian, and I could write,” Lane told the Observer in 2008.
“I sailed through the place like some kind of movie queen. I got lots of attention and everything I wrote they seemed to like.”
Later projects, such as Luv and Searching, did not match Bread’s popularity, but Lane continued to write scripts and poetry, one of her first loves.
Asked in the same 2008 interview how she believed she was publicly perceived, she replied: “Oh, just that I’m a smiling lady, lots of money, spoiled to death, decided she wanted to open a sanctuary, mainly for herself, we’ll sort of put up with her.”
